Hotel and homes eyed for San Jose site near Santana Row

SAN JOSE — It’s a San Jose hotel development with a twist: Along with more than 100 hotel rooms for a project near the Santana Row and Valley Fair retail centers, builders want to add dozens of residences to the mix.

The project, located on West San Carlos Street between the retail hubs and downtown San Jose, would include 106 hotel units and 28 residential units.

“We are seeing speculative developers who are trying to take advantage of the close proximity to the Google transit village downtown and the Santana Row and Valley Fair centers,” said Dharmesh Patel, executive managing director hotels with Colliers International, a commercial realty brokerage.

Mountain View-based Google has proposed a transit-oriented development of offices, homes, shops and restaurants in downtown San Jose near the Diridon train station where 25,000 people could work, including 15,000 to 20,000 people employed by the search giant.

Valley Fair is undergoing a dramatic expansion of its store and restaurant spaces. Santana Row not only has been adding retailers and restaurants at a brisk clip in recent years, but also is the site of a fast-expanding campus where up-and-coming tech firm Splunk has established a Silicon Valley outpost.

“A lot of developers are undertaking land assemblies to create lots big enough for development,” Patel said. “Scattered in-between, we will also see hotels being developed as well.”

Plus, multiple hotel projects are being eyed in San Jose. North San Jose, the airport area, downtown San Jose and the west San Jose area near the malls are among the most popular sites for new lodging ventures, city planning records show.

The hotel and homes development could be intriguing because of the effort to include dozens of residences.

“If they can sell the residential units, that essentially helps to finance the construction of the hotel,” Patel said. “And the groups that want to develop in this area of San Jose are poised for good things, once the Google transit village comes to fruition.”